


Serious Earth

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU - Comicverse, Smallville
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-11
Updated: 2011-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:14:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce takes off his skin.  (Response piece to the Batman graphic novel, "Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Serious Earth

He leaves Robin with Alfred and drives out to Smallville. Black Jag  
with black matte interior, Batmobilish in the way that all the best  
cars are. Crouches against Lex's door without being able to knock. He  
thinks he may have given all his power to make decisions back to  
Harvey. He needs things to be linear. Arkham to Wayne Manor, Gotham to  
Metropolis to Smallville. Even the closed door was enough to stop him.

He's scraping his nails over the paving stones when Lex finds him. One  
black eye, bloody fingertips. Raw all over. Ready to be led when Lex  
catches him by the arm and takes him inside, kneels on the parquet in  
his bathrobe and boxers and unlaces Bruce's shoes. Strokes his feet  
while he peels off damp, icy socks.

The whole house smells vaguely like chlorophyll and chlorine.

There are bruises on Lex's shoulders. Mouth-marks trailing down his  
spine. He isn't alone, then. Someone strong enough to bruise him,  
apparently, but not badly. He can remember Lex at seventeen, too naked  
for his own good, black and blue from shoulder to hip. How good he  
looked in blunt trauma.

That summer, they smashed three cars, two doors, broke the handle of  
the kitchen broom. Broke dishes, curtain cords. There were ligature  
marks on at least one of them at any given time.

There are two glasses in Lex's study. One of them only smells like  
sugar. A big, inexpensive sweater is abandoned across the seat of one  
chair. And it's comforting, really, that Lex's tastes haven't changed.    
Bruce can picture big shoulders, dark hair, very young. He walks  
through to the bedroom and glances in. The boy asleep face-down on  
Lex's bed still has his jeans on.

He was right about the colouring.

"How old is he?"

"Younger than you were, the first time."

Somewhere beyond that room, Bruce finds the pool. Dark wood of the  
sauna, cold now, very quiet when Lex closes the door. Lex swings at  
him, fast and careful, and misses. He didn't really have a chance, but  
it's worth something that he tried. He just nods. Strips and stands  
there until Bruce comes for him. Wraps around him and slams Lex back  
against the wall. The impact pushes all the air out of Lex; Bruce's  
weight against his ribs doesn't let him get it back.

It's this hard, frustrating fuck, Lex's back against the wood  
panelling and his legs around Bruce's waist. Never quite flexible  
enough, quite slick enough, for Bruce to just *take* him. He finds  
himself chewing on Lex's shoulder just to keep from howling. There's  
blood in his mouth.

"What the hell happened to you?" Lex asks.

He's shining. He rubs his wrists against Bruce's neck, offering. Belt  
around them, twisting above Lex's head, hooking the leather high up.  
Suspended by his arms, held in place by Bruce's fuck between his legs.

Lex still loves: black hair, white skin, blue eyes, men big enough to  
hurt him, blunt trauma, emotional trauma, isolated adolescents, need.

Lex bites him when he comes. Hissing into Bruce's hair, limp  
afterward. He pushes himself up on Bruce's hips and releases his own  
arms, drops back onto the bench.

"Bruce. What happened?"

"Bad week." Bats. Blood. Eyes. Coins. Loa. Walls. Insects.

Insects.  Incest.

He remembers a fifteen-year-old Lex in red silk, alone with him in  
Metropolis, a perfect echo of his newly dead mother.

Bruce crouches. Sits on the floor and lights the gas fire under the  
stones, pours water on when they're hot enough to make steam. After a  
minute, he arches back and bites Lex's ankle. He draws traces of blood  
again, dark and dull in his mouth.

Lex cards Bruce's hair, and it reminds Bruce that his own fingertips  
are shredded. He steals Lex's hand. Kisses it, sucks the fingers. Lex  
slides in next to him, tight as an aggressive cat, and chews on  
Bruce's shoulders.

The watch he forgot to strip off whispers nine antemeridian. Kinetic  
mechanical beauty. It's his second in this design: he needed very much  
to take the first one apart.

Lex gets up and collects his robe. "I need to get back. Are you  
staying?"

"For a few hours. I have meetings this afternoon."

Lex nods. "You know where to find me. Food in the kitchen if you're  
hungry." He goes.

It's quiet in the sauna. He's very, very calm. Bruce Wayne, fucked-out  
sometime lover of Luthor's heir, sprawled in the expanding steam,  
fondling his favourite timepiece toy.

Batman starts whispering to him sometime later, crawling up the back  
of his skull. He makes a lunge out to destroy the watch, but Bruce  
quashes the push and keeps his watch where it is, intact. Batman  
crawls back down and lurks in the dark. Eventually, Bruce gets up and  
turns out all the lights, lies in hot steam in the dark, and melts.


End file.
